An­na-Lisa Paul

The 911 emer­gency hot­line has been ac­ti­vat­ed by lo­cal civ­il avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties to deal with any sus­pect­ed cas­es of the dead­ly Ebo­la virus ar­riv­ing in this coun­try.Li­cens­ing man­ag­er, Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty, Kings­ley Her­reira an­nounced that yes­ter­day.Chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) Dr Stephen Ram­roop agreed with Her­reira that the air-to-ground mea­sure had be­come nec­es­sary to ac­ti­vate emer­gency sys­tems to pre­vent the im­por­ta­tion and spread of the virus.

Ad­dress­ing stake­hold­er agen­cies dur­ing a meet­ing at the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), Knowsley Build­ing, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith, who chaired the meet­ing, said: "There is ab­solute­ly no rea­son for fear or pan­ic. There is a rea­son for us to be cau­tious."As­sur­ing the pub­lic that sys­tems were in place to deal with any even­tu­al­i­ty, Grif­fith said the co-or­di­nat­ed ap­proach was a "proac­tive" step by Gov­ern­ment.

"I do not think we should wait for things to hap­pen and it is very im­por­tant to pre­pare now, rather than lat­er," Grif­fith said.He said sev­er­al min­istries, in­clud­ing Health, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Trans­port and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, along with the ODPM, T&T De­fence Force, NOC, po­lice, fire, cus­toms, im­mi­gra­tion, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency and the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit, were all work­ing close­ly to tack­le the is­sue of the Ebo­la virus.

Re­veal­ing his min­istry had in­creased sur­veil­lance along the coun­try's coast­line to pre­vent the il­le­gal en­try of peo­ple in­to the coun­try and re­duce the num­bers who would not be prop­er­ly screened by port health of­fi­cials, Grif­fith said: "We will de­ploy more con­crete strate­gies to ad­dress any po­ten­tial oc­cur­rence of the virus as well as lim­it po­ten­tial threats should the Ebo­la virus reach our shores."

Her­reira said while there was no gen­er­al trav­el ban in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, many air­lines had opt­ed to cease flights to in­fect­ed coun­tries which in­clud­ed Liberia, Sier­ra Leone and Guinea.He said on Mon­day, of­fi­cials from the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go, con­firmed they were ex­am­in­ing eight to ten sus­pect­ed cas­es.

Prin­ci­pal Med­ical Of­fi­cer, Min­istry of Health, Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry said the quar­an­tine and iso­la­tion fa­cil­i­ties set up at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, and at the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal were not yet utilised be­cause "there is no Ebo­la virus case in T&T."

Adding that the 12-bed triage area at the EWM­SC and the two 24-bed wards at Cau­ra was ful­ly equipped to treat with any sus­pect­ed cas­es ar­riv­ing in the coun­try, Tilluck­d­har­ry ad­dressed con­cerns by health work­ers who were afraid to con­tract the virus them­selves as they in­ter­act­ed and treat­ed pa­tients."The on­ly thing that would cre­ate that pan­ic would be a lack of in­for­ma­tion," he said.

Tilluck­d­har­ry said the au­thor­i­ties were in the process of ed­u­cat­ing and sen­si­tis­ing health work­ers on how the in­fec­tion was spread, which was through di­rect con­tact with the bod­i­ly se­cre­tions of some­one suf­fer­ing from the virus, such as blood, vom­it, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed bed­ding and cloth­ing.

Al­lud­ing to oth­er sources of how the virus was spread, Tilluck­d­har­ry said in West Africa, an­i­mals, such as mon­keys, chim­panzees and pigs, of­ten act­ed as a trans­mit­ter of the virus to hu­mans.Asked about whether lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were look­ing at im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to quar­an­tine an­i­mals im­port­ed in­to the coun­try, Tilluck­d­har­ry said: "We will be look­ing at this area as well."